Paved With Good Intentions
by usmarox
Summary: Beka meets Trance, and then has to prevent Trance becoming a victim of charity. Rated R for implied assault/physical description.


**DISCLAIMER:**  I haven't read _Destruction of Illusions_, but I understand it deals with how Beka found Trance too.  I'm not trying to tread on anyone's toes, but it tracks with the characters as I read them on screen, so, I dunno……if films can have alternate endings, why not a series with an alternate beginning?

_Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which should never have happened - and those which do not matter._

**William Ralph Inge, c.CY6900**

Beka had grown up in space – whether aboard the Maru, someone else's ship, or on one of a dozen dozen drift settlements.  Like most experienced spacers, she was completely at home on a drift…..the sleazy atmosphere had long since stopped intimidating her.

"Harper……have you found that bucky cable yet?"

"Yeah, boss, but it's kinda expensive……."

"How expensive…..?"

"Errrrrrr……"

"HARPER!"

"Oh…..ummm….5,000 thrones a kilometre?"

"I thought he said 3?"

"He did. Past tense."

Beka sighed.  "All right, I'll be over.  Give me a few minutes."

Beka had long become accustomed to the rife petty crime that seemed to thrive on reprocessed air and artificial gravity.  Which might have explained the look the would-be cutpurse gave her when she caught her wrist half-way to her pocket.

"It's the genetically-enhanced reflexes.  Can I help you, or can you help yourself?" Beka added caustically, as she turned around.

What she saw surprised her.  Perhaps it shouldn't have, but it did.  There were more than a million Known Worlds, but until today Beka would have sworn she'd met every species that dwelled on them. 

Her pickpocket was a slender, purple humanoid, about Beka's height, with short, tufty blonde hair.  She looked….well, like a drift dweller.

"Who are you, what are you, and how much do I have to pay you to go away?" Beka demanded.

Her captive said nothing, simply staring at her with huge brown eyes.

Beka shrugged.  "Here's the deal.  You can start talking, or I can call security.  Your call."  

At the mention of the word "security", her eyes, if it were possible, opened even wider.  She began to pull away from Beka's grip, but Beka tightened her fingers on her sleeve.

"Don't want to visit security, no?."

She appeared to think, then shrugged and stopped struggling.  For the first time, Beka applied her eye to her pickpocket.  She wasn't slender, so much as skinny.  

"When did you last eat?"

She shrugged again.  Beka started thinking. Given the amount of people and money that transited a typical drift every day, someone who couldn't afford to eat on a regular basis must have fallen on hard times indeed.  I cannot believe I'm thinking this, thought Beka.  Since when have I become a charity?

"I haven't done lunch yet.  Want something?"  Beka managed to eke a cautious nod out of her in reply.

"Well….shall we?"  Beka smiled.  It disarmed her captive - no, thought Beka.  More "acquaintance".  I've never bought lunch for a "captive" before – enough that she gave Beka a smile of her own.  A guarded smile, with the mouth alone, not the eyes, but a smile nonetheless.

Beka made her way to more reputable eatery – reputability in this context being measured as how often her elbows stuck to the bar.  

"Look.  I'm buying your lunch, I haven't called security, and I haven't killed you.  I think you at least owe me a name."

The reply was so quiet Beka had to ask her to repeat it.  

"Trance……my name is Trance."

"Nice.  Beka," she added, extending her hand.  Trance took it gingerly.  As she did, one of Beka's eyebrows rose.  Trance started to back away, but Beka smiled and shook her head.

"It's your tail…..you have a tail."

Trance gave Beka another lukewarm half-smile, and another nod.  Beka decided not to press the issue, and looked at the menu.  

"What do you want, Trance?"

Yet another shrug.

"Oh……anything, really.  I'm not a fussy eater."  The voice was soft, a voice, Beka guessed, that had long since discovered that being heard too often was painful.

Their order was taken by a droid so old and decrepit that it looked as though it predated the Systems Commonwealth. Beka looked around briefly, and decided to try and pry Trance open a little wider.

"I grew up on places like this, trawling through the Known Worlds with Dad, hauling cargo from one backwater rock to another.  Maybe once in a month we'd visit somewhere with thick air.  I never much liked those – I've never understood how people survive with a temperature range as big as you find planetside."  Beka laughed, and continued. "So, when Dad died, I inherited his ship, the Maru, and I carried on doing pretty much the same thing.  I'm only here for a few days, to grab some equipment I need for my next salvage run.  So, what about you?  How'd you wind up here?"

"It's the first place the freighter stopped," Trance replied, somewhat cryptically.

Beka snorted.  "I get it.  This is the classic orphan-runs-away-from-home-hard-luck-story, is that it?"

"Something like that."

"And you ended up here picking pockets for a living?"

"Well……I did some other things too……"  Beka could tell by the way Trance stopped looking at her and started looking at the tabletop that this part of her past was a distant country, with very well-guarded borders.

I'm not surprised, thought Beka.  She was dimly aware that most drifts had a population of "homelesses", but they mostly stayed out of sight, as far away from any monitoring as they could find.  Beka had always vaguely approved of it – if you have to sleep rough, then far better to do it somewhere with a nice, warm, regulated environment.  But looking at Trance, what had seemed in relative terms to be a soft option, didn't seem so soft anymore.

Their food arrived, and they ate in silence.  Once or twice, Beka tried to resurrect the conversation, but Trance simply nodded, or shrugged, or just plain ignored her, and eventually Beka gave it up as a lost cause.  By the time she was halfway through her lunch, Trance was finished.

Beka chuckled.  "Hungry, or just in a hurry to get away?"

Trance pulled back her chair, as though to leave.  "Thank you, Beka, but I should go now."

"Whoa, whoa……why the hurry?"

"I just……have to go."

Beka nodded.  "Well, I'll still be here tomorrow.  If you'd like to do lunch again," she added with a smile, "same time, same place."

Trance nodded again, and quickly disappeared into the crowd.

---

True to her word, Beka was sat at the same table the next day.  As she nursed a coffee, she kept checking her watch, the door……and her wallet.  When Trance was half an hour late, Beka ordered her food anyway.  When she had finished, and Trance had still not arrived, Beka began to worry.  When people wanted not to be found, they headed to a drift……but by the same token, when people disappeared on a drift, they were rarely found either.  She stood and walked to the bar.  Drifts, of necessity, ran on a variety of different clocks, and despite it being Beka's subjective lunchtime, the café was not crowded, with only one other patron at the counter.  The barkeep, a slick-faced, mottled green Chichin, finished serving his other customer and turned to face her.

"I'm looking for someone, someone who was here yesterday."

"There were lot of people here yesterday.  I don't know them all," he replied, with a shrug and a blank expression that screamed _amnesia due to lack of money_.

Beka placed a credit chip on the bar, and added "You'd remember this one.  She was purple.  Came in with me this time yesterday."

"I know the one…but I never see her before."

Beka leaned over the bar conspiratorially, and dropped her voice.  "I think she's one of the homelesses."

"I definitely not know her, then.  But, if you really wanted to find a……homeless……," he almost spat the word, "then you should be looking at the maintenance stores.  Hardly used, and no security there."

Beka nodded, thanked him for his time, and took her leave.

---

The maintenance areas were everything the Chichin had promised – a warren of dimly-lit corridors, dead ends, open conduits and rusting pipework.  Steam rose from the occasional grate, and condensation settled on the metal surfaces, giving them a sickly brown sheen.  More than once, Beka saw eyes in the dark, eyes that fled before she could get close enough to find who – what – they belonged to.  Almost subconsciously, she undid the thumb-break on her holster.

She had no idea what she was looking for, and was even more surprised when she found it.

Tucked away in corner was a……shape, that on closer inspection turned out to be a blanket with blonde hair.  Beka jumped back with a start when the blanket opened one eye and looked at her.

"Beka…," murmured Trance, and shut her eye again.

"Trance?  Are you alright?" Beka asked, a mixture of caution and urgency in her voice.

"I'm fine," she replied, almost dreamily.  "You should go……"

Beka carefully approached her, and pulled the edge of the blanket back.  She grimaced involuntarily as she realised it was damp and……sticky?

"Trance……oh God……Trance……"  Beka pulled her hand back, and realised that the source of the stickiness was tacky, drying blood.  As she did, Trance looked up at her, and Beka became aware of why she had only opened one eye.  The other was swollen shut, a mass of angry, dark blue bruises highlighted with a crust of congealed blood.

"Beka……please go…"  There was an edge in her voice now, one of fear.

"Trance, I'm not going to leave you here.  Not like this."  Beka pulled off the rest of the blanket, crouched, and placed her arm under Trance's shoulders.  As she tried to stand, Trance doubled up, coughing.  In the poor light, it took Beka a moment to realise that Trance's exhaled air was hazed with blood too.

"Trance, work with me here.  I'm getting you to a doctor." Beka was insistent now, and more than a little angry.  With a set look of determination on her face, Beka drew her gauss pistol and began to walk.

---

"……extensive lacerations and contusions to the face and upper body, three broken ribs – one of them was a compound fracture, you know, her left lung was already part-flooded when you found her – and a cracked vertebrae.  She was lucky you found her when you did.  From experience, I'd have given her another 12, maybe 16 hours."  The Perseid physician looked briefly at the flexi detailing Trance's litany of suffering, and then returned his eyes to Beka.  "Do you know what species she is?  I've never seen one like her before, and any advice about her physiology…"  His voice tailed off as Beka slowly shook her head.  "Well, you can pay the bill now, or I can have it put on your berth's account."

Beka was still smouldering with rage.  "I'll pay the bill," she said slowly, evenly, but with steel in her voice, "when she walks out.  Not before.  Is there anything else you can do now?"

The Perseid shook his head.  "What she needs now is rest."

"Well, then, leave us.  If anything happens, I know where you are."  She yawned, and called the Maru.

"Harper?"

Harper looked even more tired than she.  "Yes, boss?"

"Don't wait up for me.  I'll be out all night.  And stop by the clinic tomorrow morning, first thing."

"Beka, I got this rash under control. It's fine. Besides, the AP linkages are – "

"Harper, this has nothing to do with your health.  Just do as I ask."

"Boss?  Are you okay?"

"_Goodnight, Harper."  With that, Beka turned off the comm, and settled into the easy chair by Trance's bed._

Trance came round in the early hours of the morning.  When she did, she seemed to go from asleep to awake so quickly Beka imagined she could hear her eyelids click.  The first thing she saw was Beka's face, her eyes shadowed from lack of sleep, smiling.

"Hey, Trance," were Beka's words.

Trance winced as she sat up.  "Hurts," she murmured.

I'm not surprised, thought Beka.  "I know.  I've been there once or twice," she added with a frown.  "Who did this, Trance?  Who was it?"

"Them."

"Who are 'them', Trance?"

"The others……the other homelesses."

"Why?  You haven't got anything worth that much trouble……have you?"

"It happens," said Trance, "it's not the first time, and," she stopped to cough, a harsh, grating sound that sounded as painful as it looked, "it isn't the last."

"There's a pile, Beka……and because I'm……different, I'm somewhere close to the bottom."  Beka could see tears welling in Trance's good eye now, her voice quavering ever so slightly.  Then her expression changed, from pain to anger.

"Beka, the reason…they came for me is because they saw me with you.  They saw me with you and assumed I had……I don't know, money, food, passage off-station." Her voice was raised now, the tears and the vitriol in full flow. "They came for me because they thought I had something I didn't, and the reason they thought that was YOU!"

Oh my God, thought Beka.  That was why she was so keen to leave……why she wanted to be left alone.

"They'll be back, won't they?" Beka asked, in a low, resigned voice.

Trance's anger had receded now, replaced by fear that was visible only in the slight shuddering of her shoulders as she sobbed quietly.  She nodded.

The enormity of what Beka had done finally hit her.  Her random act of charity had turned out to be a drawn-out death sentence.  Well, she thought, the road to Hell……

"Trance, if they come back……"

"They'll probably kill me.  Not because they want to……maybe just because they can."

Beka took a deep breath.  Time for some more charity, she thought.  Let's hope it turns out better than last time.

"Trance…I got you into this.  I think I can get you out, too, if you want to."

Trance looked at her.  "How?  Kill everyone on the station?" she asked, bitter sarcasm dripping from every word.

Beka shook her head.  "Let me talk to someone."

---

Beka found Harper in the clinic's small, grubby waiting room.  He was sat on a table as the doctor applied some foul-smelling yellow goo to his neck.

"Heya boss……why the cryptic late night phone calls?"

"Have you found a new environmental guy yet?"

Harper shook his head.  "The one applicant we had, well, he was so Flash-fried that his eyes were inside out.  I got his number if you – "

Beka waved her hand. "Forget him.  How long will it take you to train one?"

"With Harper's patented 'Insta-Genius" technique? About ten minutes." Harper laughed.  "Why?  Have you found one?"

"No.  I've found someone that needs to get off the station in a hurry, and will probably work for food."

"Okay……is there a story attached to this, or do I not want to know?"

"Yes, there is, but not now.  Maybe she'll tell you later if you ask nicely."

"'She'?  'She' is good," chuckled Harper.  His laughter trailed off as Beka looked at him.

"Now is not the time.  Do you have everything else?"

"Yup.  We're just down an ES officer, and you say that's covered.  So, yeah, we're good."

"Right. As soon as we find Rev, we'll go.  Now, meet our new ESO."  Beka led him back into the clinic's small ward.  Trance turned her head to them as the door opened.  Harper leant up to Beka's ear. 

"The purple one, right?" he whispered.  Beka nodded.

"Trance…do you have anything you need to pack, anything you can't leave behind?"

It was tragic, thought Beka, the way she didn't even need to think before shaking her head.

"That's good.  Can you walk?"

"If I have too," she said softly, the determined words given lie by her appearance.

"Harper, take one side, and I'll take the other.  Easy…"

Trance stoically ignored the pain from her back and chest as she swung her legs off the bed and onto the floor.  Then the trio began to walk.  The docking arms were less than a kilometre away, but it was the longest kilometre Trance had ever had to endure.  As they struggled through the thronged corridors, she kept looking over her shoulder, seeing imagined assailants in the corners, the maintenance conduits and drinking dens.  By the time they reached the Maru, Trance was in full panic, hyperventilating despite the complaints from her tortured ribs.

"Harper.  Take her inside, and put her to bed.  In fact, give her yours, since it's on the bottom.  You can have the spare one.  I'll settle the bill and get us out of here."

Harper rolled his eyes.  "Why is it, whenever there are women in my bed, I'm never there as well."  Beka shot him a glance that could have melted carbon fibre.

"Harper.  No more jokes."  Beka mentally cursed herself; his tactlessness was entirely the result of her doing.  She headed to the cockpit and immersed herself in the task of getting the Maru spaceborne.

---

Beka came aft after 'streaming three systems.  Trance was asleep, her expression peaceful enough that it gave no hint of her recent troubles.  Beka delicately perched herself on the edge of her bunk.  Presently, Trance's eyes snapped open.

"Heya," Beka said softly.

Trance smiled.  For the first time in Beka's memory, it was a true smile, the whole of her face contributing a little to it.  She began to speak, slowly and deliberately, as though reading from a cue card.

"Beka, my people believe……my people believe that every situation has a perfect possible outcome…that in every case there is a perfect possibility.  Until I met you, though……I wasn't sure I had one."

"Thank you, Beka."

Beka smiled, a warm smile to match Trance's. "Well. Welcome aboard."


End file.
